Fox is blocked from giving address

MEXICO CITY -- In a historic rebuke, opposition lawmakers seized control of Mexico's congressional chamber yesterday and blocked President Vicente Fox from delivering his final State of the Nation address.

Fox, who was adorned in Mexico's green-red-and-white presidential sash, stood awkwardly in the chamber's foyer for nearly 10 minutes before conceding that he had no chance of entering. Surrounded by bodyguards, Fox was handed a microphone, quickly said that he would leave, and gave a copy of his speech to a legislative official.

The lawmakers who commandeered Mexico's congressional building are aligned with the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, and its candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is demanding a full recount of the July 2 presidential election results.

After giving up, Fox turned and left the building with his wife, Martha Sahagun. Instead of addressing the legislature, he gave his speech on television, calling on Mexico to mend deep divisions that he said threaten the nation's newfound democracy.

The nation ``requires harmony, not anarchy," Fox said in his address.

``Whoever attacks our laws and institutions also attacks our history and Mexico," he added, a thinly veiled reference to Lopez Obrador.

The speech on national television followed the bizarre scene at the congressional chamber, which was also broadcast on television. The latest unrest was part of massive protests and chaos that have enveloped Mexico City's downtown since the election was held on July 2 to replace Fox.

Lopez Obrador, a populist former Mexico City mayor who has led the demonstrations, says that fraud, allegedly committed by Fox's National Action Party, is responsible for his apparent narrow loss to Felipe Calderon. After refusing Lopez Obrador's request for a full recount Aug. 6, Mexico's special election court is expected to certify Calderon's victory within days.

PRD lawmakers rushed the stage in Mexico's legislative chamber, which was draped with a huge Mexican flag, while Chamber of Deputies President Jorge Zermeno tried in vain to get them to return to their seats.

The lawmakers chanted ``vote by vote, polling place by place," repeating a phrase that Lopez Obrador and his supporters have plastered on posters for the past two months. Some waved signs that said ``Fox is a traitor," and others lofted Mexican flags.

Fox's departure from the legislative building, which is in the poor San Lazaro neighborhood of Mexico City, capped a strange sequence of events that captivated this city. First, thousands of police officers in riot gear surrounded the legislative building, anticipating an assault by thousands of Lopez Obrador supporters.

The masses of protesters never materialized. Dozens of street vendors who had anticipated a big crowd stood idle on the streets leading to the building. Police officers practiced using their shields to block violent demonstrators, squatting and rising repeatedly. With nothing better to do, many drifted toward the vendors, marching back to position sucking on popsicles.

While the police waited for an onslaught that never came, Lopez Obrador convened his latest in a series of dozens of ``informative assemblies" in the large downtown square, the Zocalo, where thousands of his followers have been camping for the past month.

``Only the unjust resort to violence," he told the crowd.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.